


Throw us to the wolves and we'll become them

by Shadowsedai



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins, dragon - Fandom
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood Magic, Dark as fuck., Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, F/M, Fantasy Racism, Fucked up coping mechanisms., Hawke (Dragon Age) Being an Asshole, It's in my head and getting written until it goes away., M/M, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape/Non-con Elements, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threesome - F/F/M, Threesome - F/M/M, Torture, Worst Hero of Ferelden ever, broken people working through trauma., demonic mind fuck, mindcontrol, questionable seduction tactics, strongly implied bestiality, world of thedas does not overrule Zev referring to Rinna as an elven lass.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-11-26 14:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20931581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowsedai/pseuds/Shadowsedai
Summary: All rebellions start with a betrayal.  When the Crows tried to use a dead woman as bait, it was only curiosity that led Zevran Arainai to still examine the trap. But when life gives you a second chance at your deepest regret. what do you do with it? And can you make a pair out of a broken trio?





	1. All love is unrequieted

It was an insultingly obvious trap, one set with bait he was outright hurt they thought he’d fall for. Although he supposed he should give them credit for how much effort they had put into the fake. From the back, at first glance from his vantage point, the girl chained at the Master’s feet was unsettlingly similar to her. The shape of the ears, the fall of deep red hair over her shoulder, even the pattern of the tattoos down her back. It was enough his breath caught, his heartbeat quickened before he had mastered himself. 

Could have been worse, he supposed. His former associates could have tried to use an imitation of his Warden. He doubted they were capable of actually capturing Cousland, even if they were willing to risk laying hands on the Prince Consort and Warden Commander of Ferelden. But as complicated as Zevran’s last meeting with his former lover had been, a sufficiently convincing fake might have at least prompted a closer inspection. More likely a chance of Aedan caught off guard than of the Crow masters bringing a dead woman back to life.

On the other hand, they did have people who knew her well, well enough to find such a close likeness in size and form. Well enough to match that improbable hair with dye applied well enough he’d swear it was real, duplicate the tattoos he had etched into her skin himself, pierce the row of rings along the edge of the elven ear he could see. But the skin itself was too pale for his sun loving Rinna, the broken posture and drooping ears entirely wrong. Clever to hide whatever missteps they might have made with the markings under layers of welts and aging bruises, perhaps in the hope her distress would override his better judgement. It might be worth the effort to find out whether the bait was willing or captive before he decided how to deal with this. 

Given the layers of injuries he could see, she was either unwilling or very, very devoted to this charade. There was raw skin under the manacles and the chain around her neck, the ear he hadn’t seen at first was broken, curled back halfway up where one of her earrings had been ripped out of her flesh. Right where he had pulled his gift back out of Rinna’s, as she had laid dying at his feet, and he had to give them credit for that detail, one he hadn’t expected them to know. The closer he got, the more of a likeness this fake had, and if he hadn’t watched her die himself… Zevran bit back a soft curse, and the elven bait’s ears twitched. When the human staring patiently at the courtyard’s gate didn’t react, she hunched further in on herself, glancing in the direction of the sound with as little movement as possible.

There was a thick scar over her throat, right where Taliesen’s dagger had caught, but that wasn’t the detail that leapt out at him. Not with those eyes, grey and deep as an ocean storm, meeting his. There was a flash of startled recognition as she saw him, a brief flicker of hope fast buried under wistful resignation as she studied his face. Her ears flattened back even farther, and her gaze dropped again. The Crow Master yanked restlessly at the chain he held her by, tapping her hip with his boot as he snapped at her for fidgeting before shouting irritably at the men he had guarding the perimeter. The men still unaware of the elven former Crow perched in a shadowed corner of a roof above them.

It was still a stupidly obvious trap, but the bait was real, after all. Too pale, too broken, but… That had been his Rinna looking back at him. 

  
  


He retreated from the roof in silence, returning to the safehouse to pace restlessly. It was impossible, but… that had been her. Had Taliesen known she was still alive when he had led his team to Denerim? Why hadn’t he told him, used her name to lure him back to Antiva? If the other Crow had, would he have believed, been willing to turn on the Wardens for her sake? The gaping abyss between him and Taliesen where she had been, lined with the sharp knives that sprouted with the belated knowledge that theirs had been the only treachery in that room had been unsurpassable. Before he had left Antiva, they had both been too lost in anger and guilt to close that breach, and by the time Taliesen had been sent after him it was easier to sever the last fraying threads of that relationship, easier to follow the Warden forward. 

Before the Warden had cast him aside in favor of a crown, he might have remained besotted enough to stay at his side regardless, to leave his former lovers in the dust. After, in the sharp edged blur that followed Aedan’s choice to exile the other Grey Warden, to cast his elven lover aside so he could wear a crown and sit at a Queen’s side… Taliesen’s offer would have been tempting, one that included Rinna unbearably more so. He was less certain of what his answer would be now that the emotional turmoil had settled, when he could look back and see the softer parts of his time with the Warden. His feelings remained complicated, but such was the way of such things. They had agreed when he first went to Aedan’s bed that it was purely for pleasure, without the need for entanglements on either side. It was hardly the Warden’s fault that he had grown attached to the human enough to be hurt by the sudden end of their arrangement.

Had Rinna been held captive by the Masters that had set them up all this time, ever since he thought her dead? Or had she returned to the life they had been trained for, alone or finding a new team, imprisoned only after his failure with the Wardens, his treachery, had been discovered? Punished on his behalf, as one of his associates left within their reach, rightfully complicit in his crimes or not. The image of the whip welts over her back, the raw skin under the chains, came back to his mind and he lashed out, kicking at a crate within his reach. Neither idea sat well with him, and he cursed whoever had remembered that Rinna had been his and thought to use her as bait. The thought that she might have spent the rest of whatever life she had in whatever dark hole they had found her in if they hadn’t used her like this rose like bile, and he cursed harder.

Bright, clever Rinna, all sharp tongue and rough edges and soft curves that melted against him as they slept. Stormy eyes that gleamed like lightning as she sketched them plans, scarred fingers dark with charcoal that left darker streaks over the thin linen of the bedding. Something had broken in him when he had stood over her bleeding body. It had gotten easier during his time with the Wardens, the sharp edges in his heart filed down and smoothed over until he could breathe again without pain, even speak her name without wanting to scream. Now that he knew she lived, that she had likely spent all this time locked in the dark depths of the house of graves, those edges broke open again, splintered, festered. If he had returned earlier, if he had chased the right leads earlier, a thousand what ifs that spun through his head. 

With another incomprehensible curse, he dropped onto the crate, head buried in his hands. She didn’t expect him to rescue her, didn’t expect aid of any sort. But she still hadn’t alerted the Master when she realized he was there. 

Somehow, that was worse than the idea of her waiting for him to rescue her from a cage. “Even if it is true, I don’t care,” he had said, spitting in her face at her protestations of innocence and love. The last thing he had ever said to her before Taliesen’s blade had drawn across her throat. She could have pointed him out to the archers waiting at the gate, seen his death for what he had done to her. It might have gained her favor, enough to regain her freedom or at least better treatment. She gained nothing from keeping quiet as he examined the trap and fled, risked harsh punishment if the others realized she had known and said nothing. 

She could have fought back when they accused her of betrayal, he suddenly thought. She always kept blades at her wrists, her calves, and they hadn’t searched her, bound her. Only taken her bow, thrown her to the ground. The way she had knelt before him as she begged for her life, she could have slipped a dagger into her hand in an instant. He had seen her take out targets just that way, kneeling coyly at their feet until she could slice them open from thigh to gut. Taliesen’s grip on her hair, the blade pressed lightly against her neck, neither would have stopped her from slicing into Zevran’s tunic clad belly, reaching back and opening Taliesen’s femoral artery. If she had been willing to kill them, to even risk killing them, she could have walked out of that room. Instead she had stayed quiescent, tears in her eyes as she tried to convince them that she would never have betrayed them, that she loved them both.

For a moment images overlaid in his mind. Storm grey eyes, reddened by weeping, staring up at him as one lover pleaded for her life, eyes blue as a summer sky glancing down at him dismissively as another explained that he was an excellent fuck, but that was really all it had been. Following them was the briefest flicker of deep brown eyes, shocked and despairing as a kicked puppy as Alistair was exiled at the whim of his brother’s widow and his brother Warden, resigned and empty as a trapped wolf when Aedan ran Taliesen through and left him in the dirt as he watched.

  
  


Zevran found himself back on that roof as full dark began to waver into dawn, watching lazy sentries pace the perimeter. They paused together as their paths crossed, lingering in muttered conversation before moving on. A few circuits of the courtyard later, they huddled under the torchlight, glancing desultorily around at the small garden and gate. His position behind the ridge of a shuttered window wasn’t close enough to hear what they were discussing, although the vulgar gestures suggested their topic. A scattering of louder words drifted up after a chorus of barked laughter, enough for him to gather they were discussing plans for after their shift. He worked the window open as they reluctantly headed out for another halfhearted patrol. 

The garret room he entered was filled with sleeping recruits on thin pallets, and he smiled despite the danger. There was a memory there, of his first years with the Crows, of the first time his little trio had shoved their bedding together to sleep softer and warmer together. Rinna, Taliesen and he hadn’t been much older than this lot when they had fallen in together, he thought as he picked his way silently to the door. He knew that, and still these recruits just seemed so very young as they slept unaware. Young and fragile, still more children than assassins.

He checked the hinges, let himself out, and relocked the door behind him. No reason to give the masters proof of which way he had entered. Not when it would let them blame exhausted children for not waking and noticing his passage. Now that bored looking Crow standing guard at the base of the stairs, on the other hand… A quick arm around the neck and his dagger slid cleanly between the ribs into a beating heart, and the corpse arranged in a slump against the wall. He slipped back into the shadows, watching the Crow master he saw before swagger down a hall to what looked like a well appointed bedroom. As the tall human passed him, he could smell the reek off him like a tangible thing. Cheap wine and cheaper whisky, almost masking the harsh undertone of sweat, semen and blood. He let him pass, fingers wrapped around his dagger’s hilt as the man stumbled on the threshold to his room, yanking off stained, already unlaced breeches, slamming the door roughly shut. 

Zev slid a hand into his pocket, letting his fingers curl around the earring that hadn’t left his pocket since he’d had to steal it back from a market stall in Denerim. To Andraste and her Maker, to all the Creators of his mother’s people, he breathed a prayer, a hope against the sinking at the back of his mind. 

Steeling himself, he left the sleeping drunk lay for now, tracing his path back into the main rooms of the building. He could still hear the dregs of revelry from the main room, the sloppy sounds of men finishing their last drinks, deciding whether to sleep where they fell or stagger off to bed. 

He knifed the next drunk to leave, casually kicking him into a corner before making his way into the room. Not many of the Crows still entertaining themselves were up to much of a defense. Zevran killed them anyways, carving his way across the room. 

Most of the room was dead or dying when the muddy blond obliviously thrusting into the night’s captive entertainment finally looked up, stumbling with his pants around his hips to a set of knives on a nearby table. The hilt of a dagger slammed into his unprotected balls, dropping him to his knees before the blade slid up into the back of his skull. His killer sat next to the chained elf, cleaning his knives as she shifted, hunching over herself as the ragged edge of her breathing steadied. 

What seemed like far too long later, she sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees without looking directly at the other elf beside her. “I didn’t expect you to…” She rasped, a broken, ragged echo of the voice he remembered, shattered by a hoarse coughing fit. When it faded, she drew into herself, staring over at him with fragile indifference. “Here to have a turn of your own or just to finish the job?” she asked, voice pained and harsh. He flinched back from it, turning away to sheath his blades. “I’ll do anything you like, if you’ll just promise to make sure I’m actually dead this time,” she continued, still staring dully at him as she leaned back, spreading her bruised thighs to give him a better look. “And I know everything you like, Zevran.”

“I was always Zev to you, Rinna,” he whispered, half reaching for her before moving to undo the chains. She looked away as he spoke, her shoulders shaking. “I am so sorry, we were wrong. I was wrong, for so many things.” When he had the chains freed from the welded cuffs around her thin wrists, he risked brushing a hand under her chin, tilting her face to better examine the bruises. Her skin was fevered, dangerously warm under his palm, and he hissed as another coughing fit wracked her too thin frame. “Brasca. Damn this all, you need to be in a bed.”

“Aren’t you picky?” she muttered, leaning forward into his hand on her face for a fleeting moment before her eyes opened again. He pulled back, picking his way back through the corpses to find clean enough tunics, a bottle of watered wine. “I don’t see how getting drunk will help,” she grumbled, a puzzled note in the ragged edges of her voice.

Zev tugged the cleaner of the tunics over her head before soaking the other in the wine and carefully dabbing at the more visible of her injuries. “Drink what’s left of this, I’ll be back when I’ve got a way out. You won’t make it over the roof with me tonight,” he whispered, as much to himself as to her. She blinked at him, some of that wistful hope edging back into her eyes, shadowed by confusion and the fevered distance.

“The Masters really want you broken, Zev. Don’t risk… I’d rather be dead than have you in the cage next to mine,” she hissed after him as he headed back for the door, the effect she wanted shattered by the coughing fit that overtook her. He smiled ruefully back at her, blowing her a kiss as he once might have.

He cleared most of the building resolutely, any sympathy he might have felt for the other Crows in this house gone. He lingered before the Master’s door for a long moment when most of them lay dead, debating with himself. As drunk as the man had been, he was unlikely to rouse before morning. Every minute before he could get Rinna out of this slice of the void added to the danger they were both in right now. And yet… letting him wake unharmed seemed to add insult to the injury he had done both of them. In the end he moved on, consoling himself with the idea of finding this particular Master again at his leisure. 

With difficulty, he got her out of that charnel house and more carried than lead her to his current safehouse. She half roused a few more times in the early morning, as he gently scrubbed the worst of the filth off her and tucked her under enough blankets to stop the shivering. He was sitting in one of the vine shrouded windows, contemplating a glass bottle of brandy, when she came looking for him.

Still wrapped in one of the blankets, she climbed up beside him, staring out at the ocean for a while. “Why?” She asked, when the silence was too much, not looking him in the eyes.

“It was easier to go back for you when they didn’t expect me, when the trap had fallen apart from waiting. I might have done differently if I had thought about what might happen to you in the meantime,” Zev eventually answered, setting down the bottle as she huffed in a very familiar manner. 

“Not what I… Why did you come for me at all, Zevran? You made your feelings very clear when…” She started coughing again, steadying herself against the stone sill.

“I thought you were dead for almost a year, Rinnala. Dead at my hands, over something… They gave Tally evidence that seemed to single out you as a traitor, as taking bribes to… We didn’t learn otherwise until after we had left you in that ditch.” He reached for the bottle again, allowing himself a mouthful before offering it to her. She took it, but didn’t drink, watching him like he had sprouted feathers. “I almost didn’t check the compound, when rumors of who they were using as bait came to me. I thought you were a planted fake at best, until I saw…” She passed the bottle back, and he took another swig.

“You could have been killed, Zevran. I appreciate that you got me out of there, but you had no reason to take that much risk over me,” she insisted, taking a small sip when he passed the bottle back to her again.

“Didn’t I?” he asked, taking silent inventory of the scars he could see around the edges of the blanket. “If our roles last night were reversed, wouldn’t you have risked just as much for my sake?”

“Yes, but.. That isn’t a fair comparison, not when...Not when I’m still in love with you,” she whispered, finally looking up at him, hesitantly meeting his eyes. “Zevran, you.. You’ve been one of the most important things in my life since we were young. Even after everything, I can’t shake that. And Maker knows, I’ve tried. I’m not sure if I trust you the way I used to, but all that leaves is a broken edged place with your name on it.”

He slid closer, brushing his fingers across her cheek, avoiding the still dark bruises as he cupped her jaw. He could feel her tense against the touch, caught between leaning into him and flinching back, and swore softly. “Rinna, I said what I said then because the idea of you betraying us was so unthinkable, the very idea of it hurt so much… Because I wanted to mean it, but…” Eyes as dark gold as the brandy between them met grey, and his breath caught, struggling with the words. “I thought I could take my heart back, keep it safe from ever hurting like that again, but there was always… An empty, broken place in your image, made worse because I had done it to myself. And just when I thought I had gotten used to it, I found you weren’t dead after all.” There was a pained, wistful skepticism in the look she turned on him, and he brushed a soft kiss against her forehead, pulled his hand back to his own lap. “I’m not saying I deserve your trust, after what I did, amore. Only that I couldn’t leave you to your fate, once I knew you still lived. Whether you would be willing to give me a chance to earn back what I rightly lost, to fix what was broken between us,” He tried not to wince at the way her eyebrows raised, the tightening of her lips. “That I will leave up to you. Consider me at your disposal regardless until you find your feet again, I owe you that at least.” 

“Debatable, but I‘m in no position to turn down the help right now,” she commented wryly, accepting his offered hand down from the window when her next coughing fit ended. He took the chance to press the back of his other hand against her neck, frowning, and she let herself lean into the contact. “I’m sure you had plans that didn’t involve coddling me,” she remarked, trying to muster up the will to pull away from him.

“Me, plans? You are thinking of entirely the wrong Crow,” he responded lightly, and she snorted, almost reaching out for the loose strand of his hair before pulling back. “At the moment, amore, my plans consist of nothing but getting you back into your bed before you collapse on me. Perhaps with another mug of willowbark and honey, hmm?” Rinna smiled weakly at that, letting herself be led back into the other room without argument. She curled back into the pile of bedding on the worn straw mattress, watching him busy himself with kettle and herbs through half lidded eyes. “Do you want me to take the first sip?” he asked, as he added a generous swirl of honey.

“Like you haven’t managed to poison people while sharing a glass before.” she retorted, mustering up another tired smile as she held her hand out for the mug. “I never did quite manage your flair with that.”

“We all had our talents. It’s why we made such a capable team,” he murmured, making himself a mug of less noxious substance as she made a face at the taste of hers. “I’ve never gotten anywhere near your knack for putting arrows where you want them, for instance.”

“Practice, dedication, a great deal of cheating the moment I had a method for it. It was better than spending any more time delving into the intricacies of interrogation, at least.” She wrapped both her hands around the clay mug, letting the heat sink into her skin. “I spent the first while in the cages dreaming of this, you know.” She stared distantly into the dark liquid, swirling it meditatively. “That there was a mistake, that you and Tally would come for me. I knew it was stupid even then, but I still kept wishing for it. Sometimes I almost convinced myself I could hear your voices, see you on the other side of the bars.”

“If we had known that you lived, we would have, amore. I am certain of that, at least,” Zevran soothed, arranging himself on the floor next to the bed, back to the wall. “If we had had such a common goal to… There was a space between us, where you had been, and far too much anger and guilt to find a way across it.” he drummed his fingers nervously over the surface of his own mug, staring over into the hearthfire. “He’s dead. Not at my hands, but as good as… I took a contract on a pair of Grey Wardens, when I had nothing left to lose. Death or enough glory from killing the unkillable to make myself at least less disposable. I ended up fighting a blight at their side. Tally came to see if he could salvage anything from my failure, redeem me enough to allow me to return home. And I let the Wardens kill him, rather than turn on them for letting me live.”

“I’m starting to see why the Masters hauled me out of the cages and into an interrogation room,” she rasped under her breath. “Zev, I don’t blame you for not coming after me, doubly so when didn’t even know I was there. And as much as I will miss Tally, I’m so grateful to have one of you back… If letting him fall to the Wardens meant they didn’t leave you in the same grave, I will never blame you for that either, amore.” She set down the mug, shivering slightly as he looked up at her. “I think, when I’ve got this cough under control, we’ll need to have a talk about where we can go from here. They’ll be hunting us both, whether I stay by your side or not.” He shook his head, looking down cast, and she cut him off before he could apologize. “They cast my lot in with yours the moment they realized you weren’t coming back, Zev. We were always too closely linked, and when Taliesen didn’t make it back either it likely sealed the matter in their minds.” She lifted the edge of the blanket next to her, giving him a hopeful smile. “Come over here and let me leech body heat? It’s getting colder out there.”

Zev smiled softly at that, stripping down to leggings as he joined her. “Of course, amore. I did promise myself to your disposal.” He kept a handspan distance between them, unsure how close she would tolerate him. Her hair, longer than it once was, was spread out behind her, and he couldn’t quite resist tugging a lock of it as he moved it out of the way. She didn’t react, and he tried to manage himself. Given the fever she was still running, she likely did feel that cold despite the banked fire on the hearth. And it was very possible she had figured out that this was the only bed in the safehouse, felt guilty about the idea of his sleeping on the floor. As familiar as this felt, it didn’t have to mean what he hoped it did.

He hadn’t shared a bed like this since… since the night before he and Taliesen had turned on her. They hadn’t been able to return to the bed the three of them had shared, not once they had dumped her still bleeding body in that shallow ditch. Finding the truth had poisoned it even further, leaving them unable to exchange more than a few words without risking blows. Aedan had routinely removed him from his tent as soon as they were finished… as soon as he was done with what he wanted. Even when Isabella had invited them both… The pirate had always been jealous of her space, her ship, as generous as she was with most things. His Warden hadn’t been any more inclined to linger in the afternoon haze any more than she was to invite them to stay longer. It said something, perhaps, that he had never shared a bed that did not include the woman falling asleep next to him. 

Never with so much distance between them, however, and as she sleepily nudged closer into his warmth, he reached out without thinking, pulling her into him as he curled around her. She didn’t wake, snuggling back into him comfortably, and he sighed softly. As easily hung for a lamb as a sheep, he decided, letting his arm drape over her shoulder, where her fingers reached up to lace with his. 

It was like going home, in a way. With the ends of familiar scented hair under his cheek, heated skin pressed against his with only the thin fabric of her tunic and his leggings between them, he could almost pretend the last year had never happened. The lack of another body at his back was a change, but there had always been nights Taliesen hadn’t found his way home. Zev shifted his other arm out from under the pillows, wrapping it around the front of her shoulders with the other, pulling close enough to bury his face in that long red hair. It had never occurred to him exactly much comfort it was to be able to do this, how much he relied on having her in his life. If he was lucky, this was a sign that he might be allowed to regain her trust, try to find their way back to something like the way they had been. Maker knew he didn’t deserve any such chance, but only fools argued with things unfair in their favor. 

Something rough edged dug into his collarbone, and he reached up to adjust the welded iron collar still around her neck, running his thumb gently under it. If she did allow him to remain in her life, he would have a great deal to make up for. The twin miracles of her survival and her potential forgiveness didn’t erase what he had done. That killing her had been Taliesen’s idea didn’t change the fact he hadn’t argued with it, hadn’t suggested checking the source of the tipoff or getting her side of the story. Rinna had been there for them since the first time they had been thrown in together, and after more than a decade of loyalty, they had turned on her like feral dogs. “I am sorry, amore, “ he whispered into her hair. “I swear I will do better by you, if you give me the chance.” 

  
  


Tommaso struggled back to consciousness with an aching head, the dawning awareness of the rough ropes binding his wrists and elbows startling him bolt upright. The gleaming edge of a dagger scraped over his cheek, drawing a thin line of blood from under his eye as he looked up. “They will destroy you,” he hissed, glaring at the lean, pale blond elf smirking down at him.

“They will certainly try,” Zevran agreed, eyes hard as agates as he considered the Crow master bound at his feet. “But they have to catch me first, and you and your fellow Masters seem to be having trouble with that. In the meantime, perhaps you and I should have a little conversation about how you bait traps, hmm?”

“She disowned you the moment they threw her into an interrogation room. Sold out every plan you had for escaping the Crows before they finished strapping her to a rack,” the older man spat, sneering. “I just wanted to see if you’d notice we even had your little accomplice before we disposed of her sniveling corpse.” The elven assassin raised an eyebrow impassively, and the human pressed on. “She was very accommodating as she begged for the chance at one more day of life, like any knife eared whore. I can still hear her gagging around my fat cock, begging for more. You’re welcome to our leavings if you’re that desperate, though I wonder if she’ll even feel your pitiful little elven prick after everything we filled her sloppy knifeeared cunt with.” 

The blade slid slowly down his stubbled jaw, digging into the soft underside of his neck, and Tommaso quieted, still sneering up at the renegade elf. “That’s very interesting,” Zevran murmured, pacing slowly around the human. “Considering I didn’t have a plan until after I was in Ferelden, when she was already chained in the cages. I’m remarkably grateful she isn’t actually dead, but it’s a bit soon to start tossing about phrases like accomplice, I think. As to the rest of your insinuations…” He pulled the taller crow upright by the binding at his elbows, slicing carelessly through the thin leather belt and letting his breeches fall. “She’s never had much of a gag reflex, but I suppose it could be possible your dick is that foul. It and your arse seem unwashed enough” he chuckled darkly, letting the tip of the dagger trace along the rim of the puckered hole, the edge of his sack.. The human whimpered slightly and Zevran kicked his feet out from under him, wiping the blade off on the blankets in disgust. “A thousand things I could do to you, and so little time, hmm? I considered castrating you and bringing you home for my pretty Rinna to finish off. She’s by far the better trained in making such things last, after all. But, tsk tsk, she’s still a little under the weather, and the clean up afterwards would be quite tedious. Easier to kill you here, and pick her up a few things at market as a consolation.”

Casually, he stepped forward, trapping the Master’s balls under the toe of his boot, and slowly shifted his weight onto them as the man whined piteously. “Please, I’ll tell you anything… Don’t kill me. Eoman’s the one who wanted you broken in, made an example. Domenic and Niccola are backing him, but the longer before you’re brought to heel, the more of the masters will start hunting you…” Zev listened to him babble for a while, taking note of the names and estates listed before bringing his foot the rest of the way down as the frantic confession turned into a broken wail. 

“Taliesen would have raped you himself, to properly make the point about touching what was ours, and likely shoved your own sword up your arse when he finished. If you’d harmed one of us, Rinna would have let your death extend over days. But they aren’t here, you’re too disgusting for me to stomach, and the market closes in an hour,” Zevran remarked lightly, eyes still stony as he regarded his victim. “What to do, what to do, hmm?” He crouched for a moment, slicing through the tendons at the back of the man’s heels. 

Stepping around the increasing puddle of fluid on the floor, he perused the rack of blades on the wall, examining the enchantment runes on each. Two of the blades on the lowest shelf of the rack looked very familiar, he noted, but left them where they were. Finding the perfect dagger, he stood over the screaming Crow master, grabbing his bound hands and neatly removing his thumbs as the fire enchantment roughly cauterized the stumps. “I don’t think I’ll kill you after all, Master Tomasso. But I’m not quite enough a fool to leave you as a threat to me or mine. Have you informed the other Masters how badly your little attempt at trapping me went yet?” the older assassin stilled under him, and the elf chuckled. “I didn’t think you had yet. It’s a nasty stain of failure to go begging for help with your house still full of corpses, isn’t it? All the recruits in Antiva will still take more than a day to clean this place up.” He rolled the man over with his foot, still toying with the enchanted dagger. 

“I should have gutted your fucking bitch,” Tomasso growled, trying not to pant with the pain in his thumbs. “When they bring you down, I’ll make sure you watch while every Crow and mercenary in Antiva gets a turn at her, at both of you, that rats devour your fucking... “ 

Zevran grabbed his tongue mid threat, smiling dangerously. “Tsk tsk, such language. And I was considering letting you keep this, too. Ah, well.” He sliced the appendage off with a calculated flare from the dagger, avoiding the spurt of blood before the fire kicked in. Without changing his expression, he slid the dagger across the Master’s eyes, blinding him before he dropped his head and strolled back to the rack of daggers. “I think I’ll keep this, it’s pretty enough. I suppose it’s highly unlikely you kept Rinna’s armor around? It’s so hard to find decently crafted leathers that actually fit her.” there was a garbled gurgle from behind him, and Zev smirked as he tucked a few of the better knives into his belt, along with the pair he recognized.. “You’re the one who didn’t want me to kill you, Tomasso. You’ll just have to blame yourself for this,” he remarked darkly, reaching down one last time to finish the rough castration job. He tossed every thing he’d removed into the fire before leaving without even a last glance at the Crow master on the floor.

On his way out, he stopped by the armory, undeterred by the heavy silver lock. A nicely stitched pack found its way over his shoulder, filled with a few more knives, the best shortbow on the rack, a smallish set of training armor, and a few other interesting bits and bobs. Almost as an afterthought, he broke the lock on the recruit’s garret upstairs before scrambling back up onto the tiles through a different window. Whether they thought to leave or not was on them, but he wouldn’t leave them trapped.

Rinna was asleep when he slunk back into the safehouse, although the new mug of tea he’d made her was empty and the fire had been built up. Zevran dropped the pack on the workbench near the hearth, quietly unpacking the supplies from the market. If all the nibble marks were still on the outside of the crate he was using for the food, they were probably okay for a bit longer, he decided. 

He crawled shirtless back into the bed, and she moved into him, pillowing her head on his shoulder as she sprawled across him, skin free of the fever’s heat. “You smell like blood,” Rinna protested mid yawn, without moving off him at all. 

“I had things to deal with,” he told her, and she huffed softly without doing more that tucking her head farther under his chin. He chuckled at that, dragging his fingers down through her hair, hesitating at the edge of her rump before bringing his hand back up along her back. “Tomasso won’t be an issue anymore. I explained the depth of his error in using you for bait,” he explained, letting his fingers stroke the length of her spine meditatively.

She propped herself up a bit farther at that, studying his face. “Not your usual style. You used to pride yourself on clean kills, love. I don’t...I won’t say the gesture isn’t deeply appreciated, but…” She traced the tattoos across his cheek softly, smiling fondly down at him as he pressed his lips to her palm. “You don’t have to go chasing my vices, Zev. Most that stay sane with that training end up dead at the bottom of a bottle. It was hard enough keeping Tally…”

“You had even more of the training than Taliesen, amore. You came through it,” he reassured her, tilting his face into her fingers even more, shifting to let more of her skin press against his. “I need the information to bring them down, to end this. I need to make examples of those that would use what’s mine against me.”

“I came through it because the two of you were always there to catch me when I was falling,” she told him, shaking her head. “I… hold off on chasing anything he gave you until I’m on my feet? I was going to stay with you for this anyways, but… I’ll get you any information you need. I can make examples for you.” She brushed her fingers against his lips as he started to protest. “I had the full training, as you said, and I’ve far more practice in being meaner than my demons, Zev love. As long as I still have you to collapse into when I’m done, and you’re willing to hold my hair out of my face every now and then.”

“Ah. As you wish, then, amore,” Zev conceded, extricating his hands from her hair enough to drag a finger over the rings down her ear, feeling her shudder against him. “Can I take this offer to mean you’re giving me that second chance?”

She caught his hand, gently pushing it back to his side as she sat up, frowning. “Zev… It isn’t…” she hauled herself out of bed, pushing the kettle back onto the hob. “Oh, good, you got me actual clothes. That might make this easier,” she announced, turning her back to exchange the oversized tunic for the shirt and leggings, giving the training leathers a contemplative glance.

He watched her, his usual cheerful lechery tinged with worry. “Conversations made easier with clothing are rarely a good sign,” he muttered, just loud enough for her to hear. With an air of resignation, he rose, joining her by the hearth. “I was hoping… you owe me nothing, amore. I…”

“You don’t get ‘another chance’. That isn’t how this works, not after running together for almost twenty years.” she explained slowly. “Because you two should have trusted me enough to let me explain, but I should have trusted you enough to keep you in the loop when I stuck my neck out far enough to draw the Master’s ire. I wanted you two to have plausible deniability until I was certain about what I was doing, but they used that secret, that I was keeping secrets, against us.” She reached out, lacing her fingers with his. “It’s not about chances. I’m not going to throw you out on your ear if you make another mistake. We’re going to trust each other to do the best we can, and try to be honest with each other, and accept that we will fuck up and piss each other off.” 

Zev lifted her hands to his lips, tugging her into him. “I can work with that, amore. I suspect with my little rebellion becoming a conspiracy of two, trust will be the best we have.” He ran his hands along her side, leaning in as she cupped a hand around the back of his neck. 

“Just so. That being said…” she pulled his face down to hers, breathing into his ear as her other hand slid down the front of his breeches. “If you ever spit in my face again, I will feed you your own balls,” she whispered intently, fingers wrapping around them.

“That is fair,” Zev hastily agreed, and she patted him on the cheek before starting to lay them out some food. “And there is the Rinna I remember,” he purred, sidling up behind her. “I was starting to fear the time in a cage had softened you.” She snorted, setting the loaf of bread back down as he reached around her to dig through the supplies, tapped a file gently against her nose.

He tossed the remains of the collar and cuffs into the corner of the coals when he finished, carefully wrapping clean bandages around the raw wounds underneath. They stayed sprawled by the hearth for a while longer, Rinna’s head tipped back affectionately onto his shoulder. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but how badly did it go that you ended up fighting a blight with your targets?” she murmured after a while, fingers still laced with his.

“They walked right into the ambush I set up with hired bandits, I leapt out of concealment shrieking ‘death to the Grey Wardens’, and I woke up flat on my back with a sword at my throat,” he explained solemnly, as she broke out laughing, the familiar sound dimmed by the rasp of her voice. “I’d say I’d like to see you do better, but knowing you…” he tapped mock chidingly at the tip of her ear before nuzzling at her neck. “They had an Orlesian bard playing chantry sister in their midst when I joined them.You could have talked your way among them easily, but… Leliana would have seen through you as easily as she did me, while she was with us.”

“Should I assume she didn’t fall for your many charms, then?” Rinna teased, and he chuckled, kissing softly up her jaw as she curved into him. 

“She did not, nor did the pretty wild witch, nor the delightfully well seasoned Circle healer who joined us,” he sighed dramatically, running a hand over her cheek into her hair. “It was very, very sad.”

“Poor, poor Zev, missing out on the fun of bedding mages,” she mourned consolingly, batting her eyelashes at him mischievously as he grinned at her. “Don’t tell me you spent all this time alone. My heart could never bear it.”

“My perfect, deadly Rinna, could there ever be another woman for me but you?” he crooned, still toying with her hair. “I was lost and forlorn in a cold, desolate land, bereft of the only comfort I had ever found…” she laughed in his face, resting her forehead against his. “One of the Wardens and I found an understanding, until he grew tired of me. We ran into Isabela for a delightful afternoon along the way, though. Captain Isabela, now,” he lightly confessed, and she kissed him firmly, fiercely.

“I’m glad to hear she’s doing well, after all that nonsense with her husband,” she remarked, wriggling a little tighter into his lap. He swore softly, reaching underneath her ass to try to adjust himself more comfortably, and she smirked. “How anyone could ever get tired of you… That Warden must have poor taste in lovers, to cast you aside so soon,” she hummed, and kissed him again slower, savoringly. 

“Politics, amore, as much as anything. He was… we were never a serious thing, and at the time… We were finished long before I returned to play this game with the Crow Masters,” he soothed, when he could breathe again, hands tightening in her hair as she deliberately shifted against his lap again. “Minx,” he hissed, trying to lift her a little farther back. 

“I have no idea what you could possibly mean,” she purred against his ear, nibbling at the tip until he whined. “If there’s something you want, just ask, Zev.”

“Brasca.” He kissed her again, then leaned back, grinning. “If that’s how you want to play, amore. Off my lap and go stand over by the bench, please.” She pouted, but did so, if not without another lingering kiss and a determined wriggle. He pressed her back against the edge, letting her brace herself as he ran his hands down her side slowly, repeatedly, memorizing the new shapes of her thinner curves. His thumbs hooked into the tops of her new leggings, dragging them down her legs as painstakingly as he could, letting his fingers trail along the inside of her thighs. As she stepped out of them, already breathing hard, he dug his fingers into her hips, pulling her down into his mouth as he lapped at her. “I’ve missed this so much, amore,” he purred, as her eyes unfocused and her fingers tangled restlessly into his hair. He kept her as close to the edge as he dared, her grip in his hair growing tighter, legs trembling to keep her upright, panting whines increasingly plaintive, before sliding practiced fingers into her sopping folds, flexing just so… He caught her as she collapsed into him, pressing soothing kisses just under her twitching ear. “A lesson in the dangers of teasing, hmm?” he whispered, as she blinked distantly at him and he flicked away the traces of ice her grip had left in his hair.

“Hmm. The lesson I’m getting from that really doesn’t seem to be don’t tease you, love…” she remarked when she had regained more thought. “Seems more that I need to do that far more often.” he trailed still damp fingers back over her thigh, and she whined in faint protest. “But not for at least an hour, I think,” she added swiftly, as he laughed. 

“Oh, that long? However shall we entertain ourselves…” he smirked appreciatively as she eagerly lapped at his fingers when he traced them over her lips, tasting herself on them. “If it is what you desire…” he bit his lip as she rearranged herself, unlacing his breeches with a possessive grin. He was painfully hard already, and she knew it as she nuzzled along his cock, smiling up at him. “That is also something I have very much missed, amore. Please, Rinna…” he hissed as she licked up his length. She tilted her head inquisitively, but another whine as he bucked his hips into her had her moving, swallowing him down easily. Maker and creators, he had forgotten how her fucking throat felt around him, how amazing she was at this…

  
  


She was smugly licking her lips when his senses returned, and he hauled her back up into his lap to kiss her properly. “Somehow, this reminds me of the time we tried to make Taliesen decide which one of us was better at that,” she remarked, tilting into the hands kneading at her back.

“A contest postponed when he kept insisting he needed more experience to fine tune his decision, as I remember. In contrast to our lovely Isabela, who announced you were better unprompted after the first time I introduced you.” Zev chuckled, eyes still heavy lidded as he watched her. 

“It might just be you have more experience with my preferences, but you’ve never given me reason to complain. At least not once we were old enough to know what we were doing and what we wanted,” Rinna soothed, carding her fingers into his blond hair. He blinked up at her with a great deal more smugness to his smirk, and she wrinkled her nose at him. “Too soon to ask if I’ve at least surpassed the Warden who tossed you aside?”

He tapped her nose chidingly, shaking his head. “No contest at all, amore. Beyond how very well you know me, he didn’t actually give me any chance to test his skill at that,” he told her, shrugging at the surprised rise of her eyebrows. “Aedan… preferred to see me take pleasure from how he took his. But he was usually willing to lend a hand when absolutely needed, hmm?.” 

“Hmm.” Rinna looked at him for a long moment, clearly finding and discarding a number of comments before rising. Finding what she was looking for, she knelt behind him and started combing the tangles out of his hair. “It’s grown out a bit, would you prefer just the sides up or all of it braided?”

“Anything is fine, Rin. Would you like me to get yours next?” he offered, leaning back into her hands and the gentle scratch of the comb against his scalp.

“If you’re offering, I’d never turn it down.” Her hands kept the steady pace as she fussed with his hair, even as she swallowed a wistful sigh. “This is the point Tally would be teasing us until someone threw the comb at him.”

“And then he’d hold it hostage until he got at least one of us naked, which seemed to turn into all of us naked very swiftly, hmm?” Zev reminisced with her, reaching back to run his thumb over her knee. “It always ended with the three of us in a pile, and you fixing his hair as well despite his protests. It was a wonder we weren't constantly late to everything, the way mornings went.” 

“I always tried to make sure we were up early enough to allow for a few… distractions along the way. I even lied to him about when we had to be places a few times,” she confessed, ignoring Zev’s unsurprised snort. 

“We did notice that, amore. You were always a far more enthusiastic seducee when we had more time to spare against your precious plans. I could never guess whether Taliesen let his hair get that tangled so you would fuss over him and fix it, or he disliked dealing with it on his own so much only the comfort of your lap would get him to sit still long enough.” He felt more than saw her amused shrug as she tied off the braid. “He cut it short the day after we reported back.”

She sighed at that, offering him the comb and rising to sit on the edge of the bed. “I suppose I’ll stop missing him eventually, but… It’s odd, being somewhere together, remembering that I don’t have to listen for him. Being two instead of three.” She smiled wryly as Zev joined her, shrugging out of the shirt as well before he started working the tangles out of her hair. 

“We have each other again, at least, hmm?” Zev commented, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “You wouldn’t have liked Ferelden, amore. Far too much snow and mud. And dogs,” he added, with a shudder only partially feigned.

“Oh, but I like dogs,” she protested. “Rather like deformed, droolly wolves. Not as much fun as ravens, but very few things are.” 

“You’re going to start befriending the local wildlife again the moment we’re out of this safehouse, aren’t you?” he asked in mock resignation, biting back a comment about doubting she’d like the dogs he’d met. If he never spoke of it, it had never happened. “I’ve barely gotten the dog drool out of my leathers, Rinna.”

“I’ll make sure to ask anything I bring home to leave your things alone,” she assured him without even an attempt at sincerity. He tugged at her hair, and she leaned into it, grinning at him. “And they probably won’t be dogs.”

“You are as impossible as ever,” he mused, tracing a finger along the twisted edge of her broken ear before reaching into his pocket. “I have no idea why I might possibly want to give this back to you,” he remarked, holding the earring out to her, “but if you happen to have a space left for it…”

“One less usable piercing than I used to,” she grumbled without any real heat to it. “As long as you promise to be gentler if you ever take it back again...Third from the bottom on the other ear should be open, I had to pawn the emerald.”

“Are you still wearing any of the pretties you won from that Coterie fellow or are all the rest paste and gilt now?” He asked, running a finger down the line of sparkling gems and metal that ringed her ear, chuckling as she shivered. “You’ve far more tolerance for these than I have.”

“Do you think I would have been allowed to keep anything the Masters didn’t think was gilt and glass?” she asked archly, biting back a whine as he fixed the ornament in place. “As much as they hurt going in, they do add quite a deal of potential in some circumstances.”

“I might have noticed such thing, amore,” he chuckled, leaving her ears alone long enough to finish braiding her hair for bed. Then he deliberately pressed his lips to the ripped edge of her lopped ear, licking along it’s twisted length as his fingers explored her torso. “Up to more yet?”

He dreamed of the Warden and the blight, as he often did. Not even the thick oiled cloth of Aedan’s tent could keep out all of the cold wind blowing, but the tall, thick muscled warrior seemed unaffected. He sat on the pile of bedding he’d collected, watching Zevran shiver in the lamplight with evident amusement. “You really aren’t meant for this weather,” he laughed, as he often had. “Come over here, then.”

Zev found himself at the Warden’s feet without memory of moving, staring up at the dark haired man like he was his last chance of salvation. He obediently swallowed down the cock offered him, and blinked gratefully at the warm blanket draped over his shoulders, the gentle hand petting into his hair, the soft praises muttered as he worked. The grip in his hair suddenly sharpened, pulling him out of the haze, away from the Warden’s lap. “Pants down, I want that pretty ass of yours tonight, Zev.”

“My dear Warden, it’s been a long day for both of us…” he started to equivocate, but found himself back on his knees regardless, Aedan’s warm bulk at his back, purring sweet, meaningless excuses, rationalizations, all with a biting edge underneath them. His Warden in a mood was a man who would not be gainsaid or swayed, and Zev forced himself to relax. The blight was putting everyone under stress, and he wasn’t usually… hadn’t always like this. They’d get through the blight, slay the archdemon, and Aedan would go back to being the flirty, sweet man who had spared his life. 

The thought occurred to him that even in the first flush of lust and infatuation, Aedan hadn’t exactly been a selfless lover, and he shook it off. They could discuss how often the Warden’s method allowed him to reach his peak as well as everything else when all this insanity was behind them. 

Taliesen, even with his taste for roughness, had never expected him to take him with only saliva, without stretching, but they had never been living rough in a tent, and it had never just been the two of them anyways. Neither of the other Crows had ever pushed him past the amount of pain he was okay with, despite the harsh games they played with each other. Ropes and knives and all the toys borrowed from interrogation rooms, but they knew each other’s limits and respected them. But they had been feeling out those limits for years, from the first time they slid hands under each other’s clothing, and Rinna had been able to heal most unrelated injuries well enough they didn’t interfere. He and Aedan just needed to find time to discuss those limits, time without injuries from battle they no longer had a healer to fix.

“Don’t be stupid, Zev. How do you really think Anora would feel about my keeping an… keeping you?” The Warden had sneered, at the end, seeming to soften a little at the look on the elf’s face. “Well, I suppose we could come to a deal,” he offered in a dangerously sweet voice. “Come to my room wearing this, be a good enough boy for me and Dane tonight, and I’ll see what I can do to keep you in my reach.” It was an embroidered dog collar he held, and Zev felt himself recoil, from the sight, from the implication of what his Warden wanted. He shook his head, backing away, and the Warden took an impatient step forward. “Don’t look at me like that. You were panting like a bitch in heat when he licked you out that night in the inn, drunk or not. And Maker, you came so hard when he knotted you… I want to see it again, with you sober enough to remember it. That will make you an elf worth keeping around.” The massive warhound at his side lolled out his tongue in amusement, and the gesture no longer seemed comical to the assassin. 

Dim flashes of the night he had woken in his own bed in the Warden’s room, still filthy with cum, scratches down his hips and a dog asleep at his back...

“Zev? Zev love, are you alright?” Rinna was asking, his head on her lap, soft hands running soothingly over his brow, through his hair. He was curled into her like a child, trying to stop the shaking as she hummed softly at him. “I don’t remember you having nightmares this often,” she whispered, concerned, when he roused enough to respond.

“Too long dealing with a blight and darkspawn, amore. I’ll be right as rain as soon as I’m properly awake, hmm?” he assured her as brightly as he could, to little avail against the concern in her eyes.

“If you say so.” She kept humming a little longer, fingers still in his hair, and he sighed, slowly relaxing as she made no effort to press the subject.

Aedan would have pushed until he got the answers he wanted, if he had noticed that anything was wrong to begin with, he thought. But that was unfair to the Warden, wasn’t it? Just because Aedan had been under stress with the blight, because they’d had different expectations of their time together... The fuzzy edge of an idea, some horrible realization brushed at the back of his mind before he dismissed it, still unrealized. He might only have been with his Warden for a few months, but it had been a chaotic, intense span of time, a battlefield romance, as it were. There had been rough edges and strife, tempestuous emotions and if they had parted less than amicably, that hadn’t changed the stormy tangle of feelings on his side. If thoughts of Aedan lingered, moments of doubt about whether it might have been worth taking the Doglord’s bargain to stay with him… less of those now that Rinna was returned to him, but the dreams remained.

“Do you want to stay where you are or would you like me to see what I can fix for breakfast?” she asked, breaking the comfortable haze he had been sliding into, fingers pausing against his scalp, smirking at the mildly protesting sound at the back of his throat. 

“I suppose a bit of food wouldn’t be amiss, but…. Are you sure you can’t just magic it from here? I’m very comfortable,” he suggested, tilting his head just far enough to kiss the inside of her thigh. 

“Keep that up, I’ll consider that your breakfast,” she laughed, sliding out from under his head as he shifted, mock grumbling at the inconvenience.

As the porridge heated on the hob, Rinna tried on the leathers, relacing them and adjusting with a resigned sigh. “They’ll do well enough until I can get a proper set,” she eventually decided. “Which won’t be anywhere around here, with the fuss the Masters are currently making. I do appreciate the thought of grabbing this for me.”

“Too easy for them to leave your old armor hanging on a rack for me to collect, it seems,” Zev shrugged, sprawled on the bed watching her. “I grabbed a handful of knives and easily concealed sheaths for them, see if there’s any you like. Except the fire runed one in the black sheath. I’m keeping that one.”

“Far be it from me to deny you first pick of your own loot, Zev,” she snorted. She dug through the assortment in the pack with a less than impressed frown, until she came to the bottom pair. “Well, strangle me with the huntress’s bowstring. I didn’t…” She pulled out the mismatched daggers, blinked hard, and set them back down before dropping back onto the bed next to him, kissing him fiercely. “I didn’t think I’d ever see them again, thank you, love.”

“Hard to forget the daggers you threatened to skin Taliesen alive over,” he noted, pulling her into another kiss. “Tommasso had them on his personal rack of enchanted pretties,” he noted blandly, and she shrugged.

“Well, yes. More to the point, those are family heirlooms, or one of them is, anyways. Didn’t I ever explain that?” she asked, and it was his turn to shrug. “The odd looking one Mother gave me the day after we passed training. It’s been passed down, mother to daughter, since before the Dales. The Fang of Fen’harel, she called it. If I… If I ever have a daughter, I’ll pass it on to her. Likely the other one too, since that’s the one Father gave me before he decided I was too unrepentantly flat-eared to bother with. I don’t even know what that one’s made of, but it’s a nice blade.”

“It is pretty. Almost gilded looking. I’m glad I could return them to you, amore,” Zev remarked, and found himself rewarded with another long kiss as Rinna shrugged out of the barely fitting armor to curl around him.


	2. All Rebellions begin with Betrayal.

Zevran caressed the soft skin of the beautiful, dangerous, and very naked woman sprawled against him, tangled in sweat damp blankets, and wondered what Aedan would have thought of this. His Warden had never made a secret of his preference for the fairer sex, that his indulgence in Zev’s company was the exception rather than the rule. ‘Leliana prattles too much’ he had said, ‘Morrigan wouldn’t tolerate my games’. He suspected the man would have been quite happy to take both elves to his bed, and the two of them together might have been able to keep up with Warden stamina easier than he had by himself, coax Aedan out of his rougher moods... 

“You’re far away again,” she murmured, a trace of concern in her voice as she ran her fingers over the hollow of his hips. She propped herself up on her elbows, traced the lines down from his brow. 

“I’m right here, amore,” he replied, still half lost in thought. Her fingers drummed restlessly over his collarbone, and he smiled up at her, tangled her fingers with his own.

“Are you? Or are you back in the blight with the Warden again?” she mused, pulling away to sit up. “My skills must have dwindled farther than I thought, if you spend that much time thinking about another lover while I’m… That was uncalled for, it isn’t my business, none of it is.” She climbed out of bed, throwing on the nearest set of clothing before starting lunch preparations.

“Rinna, it isn’t you. He’s just stuck in my head, turning up like a bad coin,” Zev protested, wincing. That odd, bitter thought was hovering at the back of his mind again, and a familiar ache settling into his head. “I was thinking about how much better it might have been if he had had us both,” he offered, and was briefly nonplussed at the scornful look on her face.

“From everything you’ve let slip about him, I don’t think I’d have put up with him for long, Zev. He must have had some better qualities for you to defend him that fiercely, but I can’t see them,” she retorted, shaking her head. He blinked at her, feeling lost as the headache throbbed harder, and that fuzzy thought stayed just out of reach.

“Aedan was a good man, he was just a little stressed, a little rough. It would have gotten better, perhaps if I hadn’t questioned him so much…” The wreck of the Dalish camp after the werewolves had finished their rampage, dead children ripped to shreds. The look on Aedan’s face when he agreed to the deal the Tevinter magister offered, traded the lives of the captured elves for a boost to his own strength. The way he had laughed along with that Bann’s son he released from Howe’s dungeon, joked about the proper place of elves, but… Zevran hissed, holding his throbbing skull as he dropped to his knees. 

Cool hands pressed against his skin, Rinna’s worried voice sounding as far away as she’d described him. “Zev! Secretkeeper’s ravens, please let me be able to fix this...” An icy spell flickered over his skin, disrupting the pain just long enough for her voice to come back into focus. “Do you trust me, love?” He nodded weakly, and her hands left his skin, the scent of copper flooding his nostrils before something wet was traced over his forehead and the world went black.

He bolted upright when he woke, heart still pounding, his head clearing as the pain vanished. Rinna was sitting next to him, smiling wanly. “I… What…?” he mumbled, trying to sort out his thoughts. One ear seemed heavier, and he reached for it, fingering the thick, engraved silver hoop that had replaced his single gold ring curiously. She watched the gesture, automatically touching the empty piercing at the base of her intact ear. 

“That’s the one I had a pair of. Tricky getting enchantments to look cheap, but they’re supposed to help resist demonic influence and mind control. I dispelled what was on you, but…” She shrugged, looking away. He noted the fresh bandage around her forearm, and sighed, reaching up to brush dried blood from his skin. 

“Why… Brasca. That fucking doglord bastard, I should have…” Zevran cursed, It was suddenly far too easy to think of unpleasant things about the Warden without rationalizing it all away, without developing the headache he always had when questioning anything the man did. More memories he hadn’t been quite drunk enough to forget rose, and his bile with it. His offer to warm the Warden’s bedroll had been empty, until the day after they’d dealt with the demon cat in Honnleath. The desire demon left alone to possess an unwary child, and he’d wondered why while it occurred to him to wonder at all. When he woke the next morning, the Warden had seemed his closest companion, the most desirable man in the world. And no matter what was asked of him, he hadn’t mustered more than a token protest. He had been fucked dry, passed around to the other nobles Aedan laughed with at the taverns, even shared with his fucking dog. And he had kept crawling back, desperate for one more pat on the head. 

He found himself retching, shaking uncontrollably as she wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulled his hair out of his face. “That bad?” she asked quietly, when the tremors eased.

“Probably worse. I almost took his deal to stay as his… his bitch, but I feared bringing the assassins hunting me onto his trail. I would have gone back to him. I would have brought you with me to sweeten the deal, handed you over to him, and…” He buried his face into her chest, and she held him close as she had after the nightmares.

“It’s alright, Zev love. It’ll be alright,” she soothed, pressing her cheek against his hair, her eyes as damp as his. 

Once she was back on her feet, it didn’t take Rinna long to work back into fighting fit. Driving herself through the dagger patterns drilled into them in their youth was easy enough, finding a way to check how badly her archery skills had atrophied far less so in the limited space of the safehouse. She settled for just building up draw strength in the end. It wasn’t like she couldn’t cheat getting the arrows where she wanted, after all. The sooner she could keep up, the sooner they could leave. The sooner they could leave, the less chance for the Masters to track this place, as obscure a location as it was.

At least she should be strong enough to ward the next safehouse they settled into. Wherever it ended up being. Zev was still being vague about his goals for the immediate future, which meant she couldn’t give him anything solid for plans to accomplish them. Hunt the Masters that come after us. Stay uncaught and not dead. Stop the Crows from buying children and breaking them into disposable weapons.

Betray every oath they had sworn, rebel against every Master that had ever claimed their loyalty. “Every rebellion begins with a betrayal,” her mother had told her, along with an assortment of other painful truisms. A disturbing number of which her life was proving out, but this one… Rinna shifted the maps, repinning them into place with her mother’s dagger. Of all the things her mother told her, that was the one she suspected her mother had understood the least. A family motto, passed down from the ones that fought their way out of Tevinter, before they had fallen in with the Crows. Passed down from elves that would have died rather than let the Crows take their pick of their children and toss the ones they didn’t want to the slavers on the docks. A thousand little betrayals of trust, until there was no loyalty left to keep you from fighting back, from seeing the corner you were backed into and finally lashing out. What the Crows did, what her mother and all the others had done, was unforgivable. 

Not that she had much room to speak on unforgivable actions, not with the multitude of scars down her forearms from more than a decade of blood magic. Maelificar, the chantry deemed her, foul and accursed, doomed to wander the fade eternally once she died. Unless she was lucky and her father’s legends were true. She doubted the Dalish Creators would look any kinder on her than the Maker, but the oblivion of letting the Dread Wolf devour her soul seemed the gentler option. Eventually. She had no intention of dying while Zev still had need of her, not while she could take the darkest actions his path would require on her own sullied soul. Nothing had really changed from the moment she decided his life mattered more to her than her own, no matter what his feelings for her might be. “All love is unrequited, and everyone dies alone,” her mother had told all of her children so often. And it was easier when she reminded herself of that. It didn’t matter whether Zevran loved her or not, not as long as she loved him and he needed her. 

Which brought her back to the rebellion she was trying to see the next step for. They needed coin enough to fund everything, which meant taking enough work to earn it. Which meant operating under the Master’s noses, as long as they stayed in Antiva. Which would be far easier with either more coin at hand or more support than the two of them. Bring down or take over the Ages old organization that had trained them, he’d declared as the goal. Nothing difficult or dangerous about that, was there, she wondered to herself, perusing the maps they had been debating over. She had planned their way though nearly fifteen years of missions and hunts when they were Crows, she could work this out, right? Zev was more involved helping her plan than he had ever been before, but… They were still running at two thirds of the team she was used to, which didn’t help anything.

“Found a new snag to the plans you’re spinning, amore?” He strode up behind her, digging clever fingers into the knots between her shoulders. She groaned as her spine audibly popped, leaning back into him gratefully. 

“Used to planning for three, that’s all. Everything else aside, it would be nice to have someone with muscles and a large sword again. We’re amazing, but…” He began working down her back, and she braced against the table.

“Picking up a few jobs here and there as you suggested might allow us the coin to hire a few stout mercenary sorts, but they tend to be only as trustworthy as their pay extends… Hmmm.” Zev paused thoughtfully, his hands pulled back from her skin long enough for her to whine under her breath. He flicked one of her ears chidingly, but resumed the massage. “I might know someone after all. It’s uncertain where he is at the moment, but I do know where he was headed…” His hands slid lower, his breath hot against her neck, the shell of her ear. “A little jaunt through the Free Marches shouldn’t disrupt what plans you have started too far?”

“Not… Not really, no. I can be packed by morning if you’ve finished anything you need here, love…” She arched back into him as his teeth caught one of the gilt rings, tugging gently, whining a little louder. Zev smirked against her neck, lifting the hem of the thin dress she was wearing slowly, tracing fingers along the leather straps that held small blades to her calves, the inside of her thighs. “Unless you had something else in mind?” she asked, leaning farther forward over the table, letting her feet slide apart to give him a better view. 

“How attached are you to those maps, amore?” he asked, pressing forward against her enough to demonstrate the urgency of his question.

“Not enough to have any objection to you fucking me over this table without moving them, Zev. We can steal new ones if we need to,” she pointed out, and he laughed as he unlaced his breeches, shifting to pin her wrists to the table. 

“Everyday brings a new reminder of exactly how much I missed you, Rinna,” he mused, sliding easily into her already slick channel. 

“I know the feeling,” she gasped as he thrust into her, his tongue back to toying with the sensitive piercings that outlined her ears. “I love you, I missed you, missed this so damn much…”

“My pretty, perfect Rinna, as hungry for what I want to give her as I am…” he pressed, letting his fingers slide around to urge her on.

It was later, curled back in bed for the night, that the words she kept using haunted him. She’d said it first begging for her life, and he had dismissed it. She’d repeated it on the window sill as he apologized, as he’d come home from running things down or left her side. Even when she said it during sex, it sank in, coiled somewhere deep inside him, making him fight to keep from coming that moment. He was the son of a dead whore, a murderer and a thief a thousand times over, who had left her for dead over nothing. A good fuck, but nothing more. If anyone should be unlovable, it should be him. Rinna snuggled in closer, smiling blissfully up at him before saying it again. “I love you, Zev. We still heading out in the morning?”

“We’ve run out of productive things to do here, might as well.” He responded, kissing her softly. He should be saying it back, shouldn’t he? Now that he had her back, the idea of her leaving him was agonizing, the idea of losing her again… Zevran opened his mouth and shut it again, cursing himself silently. They were just words. He’d been ready enough to say them to the Warden before he was cast aside, as poisonous as all those memories were now, as false as the obsession he had felt had been. Why did they stick in his throat everytime he tried to say them to the one person he was relatively certain loved him? “As for the other…”

“Zev… do you have any intention of dumping me back into a shallow grave or vanishing into the aether when my back is turned?” Rinna asked, sighing as she wrapped a strand of his pale gold hair around her fingers. He shook his head in violent negation, and she smiled a little. “Then we’re as okay as we’ve ever been. All true love is unrequited, as my mother used to say.”

“I do care for you, amore, be certain of that.” He pulled her close, pressing his lips to her hair. Once or twice, the idea that her magic could twist his feelings as easily as Aedan’s demon friends occurred to him, chilled his spine. But this wasn’t the same, was it? He hadn’t been able to hold the slightest disparaging thoughts about the Warden until far from his side, hadn’t been able to contemplate the mere possibility of being controlled until the control was broken. He wasn’t lying at her feet and professing eternal devotion. He couldn’t even bring himself to admit what little affection he was certain of. If she was toying with his mind, she was either far subtler than the craftiest of demons or inept beyond measure. If she was willing to resort to such methods with her own team, he and Taliesen would not have been able to dispose of her in the first place.

And if she had meant to slide tendrils of influence into his mind, she would not have shared her silver ear cuffs. The runes were right for what she claimed for them, he remembered her acquisition of them long ago. You don’t give the antidote to someone you intend to poison, he noted decisively. The Training Masters had shoved her into the darker arts the moment her magic had come to light, and he and Taliesen had always trusted her not to use anything she learned on them without cause. As they had trusted him not to poison them, as they both trusted Taliesen to respect when they told him no, no matter what position the heavily muscled sadist had had them in.

  
  


Curled together in a hammock in the hold of a ship some days later, Zev traced slow lines over her tattooed shoulders, lost in thought. “Amore, would you be opposed to discussing how you survived a certain misunderstanding?” he finally asked, and the tiny magelight she had conjured to push back the dark sputtered out.

“Short answer, Tally fucked it up,” she replied in that rasp edged voice after her own thoughtful pause, long enough to make him wonder if she would answer. “He caught my voice box and windpipe with only a nick to the veins, missed the artery entirely. Meant I’d drown in my own blood before I’d bleed out.” She paused again, fingers restlessly tapping against his skin, and the magelight flickered back. “I had enough time to resort to the vice I’m least proud of. Even easier when I was already bleeding that much.”

“Ah.We really didn’t take that into account, did we?,” Zevran muttered. “I was under the impression you couldn’t use that trick to heal yourself out of your own lifeforce? Or was it merely a desperation measure that came through?”

“Trying anything at all was desperation at that point, really. But… There was, technically, another lifeforce available,” she whispered, laying his hand over a small scar low on her belly. “Enough to keep me from death, stop the bleeding, not enough to fix much of the damage.” He stiffened briefly, then pulled her closer, pressing a comforting kiss to her temple.

“I am sorry. I am so sorry, amore. May I ask, did you know…” He didn’t pull his hand back, memorizing lines of scars and tattoos, familiar and new. 

“Given the timeline, the suspect pool wasn’t that large. It wasn’t far enough along to tell whether it was full elven or not, so it could have been either of yours.” She shrugged against him, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, nuzzling behind her ear. “I was waiting to mention it to the two of you until I was a little more sure it would keep. Our life was never an easy one.”

“They would have been all of ours, either way,” he assured her decisively. “What is, is, amore. Our child would not have survived your death. I admit, now is an even more precarious time to consider new life than our time with the Crows was, but should our usual precautions fail again...”

“Then we can see where we are, and what plans we might make,” Rinna agreed. “I… My mother bore near a dozen children, to almost as many men, Zev. Rafael, Salvestro and I are the only ones that still live, out of the six that survived Crow training at all. I couldn’t…”

“I know. That is what we must fix, hmm? Something to fight for, in the end.” He and Taliesen had been the only two out of their group, thrown in with her as the last of her own. There had to be a way to protect them, from raising more as broken as they had been.

  
  


“Zevran, you degenerate oaf! What are you doing in Kirkwall?” The tall Rivaini pirate, tangled, ink black curls caught behind an embroidered kerchief, lit up the moment she noticed the blond assassin. Abandoning the card game on the table behind her without waiting for a reply, she slung an affectionate arm around his shoulders, tugging him towards her companions. “You simply must come meet this lot. We’ll deal you in, you’ll buy us a round of drinks, and you can catch me up on everything that happened since the blight.”

“Two steps into the bar and you’re already poaching him back from me. I see how it is, Isabela,” Rinna chided as she peered out from around Zevran’s taller form at the crowd, the faintest rasp still left to her still melodic voice. Isabela released the blond instantly, scrambling around him to take the smaller redhead by the shoulders, staring incredulously down into her face before pulling her into the expanse of richly toned cleavage.

“Hmm? Nothing much, oh queen of the seas. My Warden decided he’d rather a crown than a Crow, my former associates still desire my death, and my favorite mage isn’t nearly as dead as I was led to believe,” Zev laughed, shaking his head as Rinna took the opportunity to snuggle further into the exposed skin, a hand sliding around to grab the pirate’s ass.

“Oh, little alleycat, I did miss you,” Isabela purred, threading her hand into Rinna’s loose braided hair to tip her face up to her own, indulging in a kiss long enough for several onlookers to start whistling. “You’ll be staying in my room while you’re here, of course,” she assured the slender elf, ushering her over to the table. “Come, sit with me, and I’ll buy you a few drinks.”

“As long as we don’t leave poor Zev too far out in the cold,” Rinna laughed, flicking a fond, teasing glance back at the blond. “I’m the one who’ll have to live with his pouts, after all.”

“Oh, I might be able to find something for him to do,” Isabela agreed, reaching back out to pat him on the cheek warmly. “As long as you think he’d still be able to keep up with the both of us. He isn’t quite as young as he was, after all.”

“Fine wines only get better with age, my dear Isabela,” he retorted, grinning. “Our pretty Rinna here can attest that my skills have not tarnished in the past year.” Isabela raised an eyebrow at that, and Rinna flicked him a dangerous smirk, shrugging easily. She draped herself over the pirate’s lap, letting him take the seat next to theirs as they were introduced to Isabela’s companions, none of whom seemed terribly surprised at the goings on. 

There was an elven brunette with Dalish tattoos, blushing beet red and peeking almost wistfully through her fingers at the pirate and assassin across from her. Much to the amusement of the dark haired men, too similar to not be related, who sat on either side of her. A dwarf, far cleaner and clean shaven than Oghren had ever dreamed of, shuffled the cards, eying the newcomers speculatively. A tall elf with scruffy white hair and the oddest tattoos Zevran had ever seen glared across the table at a thin, lanky blond with a staff over his shoulder.

They didn’t diminish in entertainment value as the night went on, either. The Dalish girl eventually overcame enough of her shyness to have a splendid conversation with Rinna that involved suggesting she visit her very nearby clan and it’s master crafter to replace her armor. This didn’t stop her from reddening everytime she noticed Isabela’s hand slipping under Rinna’s dress. 

The other elf, who had a distinctly northern tevinter accent and a furtive, hunted manner, was engaged in an exchange of not quite friendly insults with the mage, one the rest of the table was patiently ignoring as it grew more heated.

“The mages here are slaves, you should want to help them! To see them freed,” the blond was insisting at the other.

“I don’t. If mages are free, they will make themselves Magisters,” the Tevinter retorted, and Rinna snorted from the other side of the table, loud enough to draw his attention. “You disagree? I thought Antiva had a Circle like most of the civilized world.”

Rinna glanced over at her lover, inquiringly, and Zev smiled back at her. “Yes, but we are Crows, and the rules are different, hmm? Our Masters aren’t disposed to giving up on a fledgling they’ve put money into training. Magic isn’t the sort of thing that prevents one from being a useful weapon, after all.”

“Templars who get too insistent about caging Crow mages tend to wake up with family members disemboweled in their beds. After a few examples were made, the rest became far less zealous about the idea of hunting mages with even the most tenuous connection with the Crows,” Rinna remarked, tossing down her cards idly. Zev caught her gaze with a half hidden smirk, and she blinked blandly back.

Of course, as vigilant as the Crow masters were at keeping mage gifted crows out of the Circle and the Chantry’s hands, they had taken many steps to ensure the mages themselves remained wary. Far too many of the senior Templars in Antiva at least suspected the prevalence of blood magic among the Crow mages, as cautious as they were at speaking of such things. If a Crow mage was delivered alive to a Circle and had to be retrieved… The Templars responsible would be punished, but the mage usually got at least a new layer of whip scars and enough time to contemplate the error of their ways in an oubliette. That said, most Templars were inclined to forget the existence of a mage claiming Crow connections on the slightest incentive. Zev had a vivid memory of one of the first times he’d coaxed Rinna past easy control of her gift, in an alley way far more public than he’d assumed. Rinna on her knees convincing the Templar who caught them that he hadn’t seen anything, himself making it up to her when they were back in barracks.

  
  


It didn’t take long to find the man he had been looking for. Not when he was begging for drinks, whining “I was a Grey Warden once!” in that plaintive voice Zevran had spent months trying to ignore. Leaving Rinna to keep Isabela occupied a little longer, he bought a pair of tolerable ales, dropping one in front of the exile. 

The human grabbed for it, babbling gratitude with the fervor of a chronic drunk. Zevran arranged himself in the chair across from him, scrutinizing him carefully. The last year had clearly been unkind to the Ferelden, unshaven, filthy, his old splintmail splattered with rust. But he hadn’t gone entirely to seed, if the rumors were true of him getting by as a freelance mercenary and thug. He wasn’t going short of food, even if he was clearly spending most of his money on cheap drink. His sword was, if not the polished dragon bone blade Aedan had taken back from him, far better cared for than his armor or the battered wooden shield. A functional drunk could be managed, where the gutter tramp he had feared to find was no use to anyone.

Halfway through the mug, Alistair finally looked up and recognized him, starting back in fear before reaching for his sword. “So he decided to have me killed after all? I’m not going out without a fight, you know.”

“Put that away before you make yourself look like more of a fool, Alistair,” Zevran snapped dismissively. “I’m not Aedan’s lapdog anymore,” he added with a snarl, fingers curling into a fist. “Not once the spell broke.” Alistair settled back into his chair, still uncertain, but clearly considering the elf in new light.

“You… You don’t just mean the point he kicked you out, do you,” he murmured, drumming fingers on the table. “Maker’s balls. Honnleath. He talked to the demon, and the next night you were practically sitting at his feet. I knew there was something off, but I didn’t think… I’d say I was sorry for not stopping it, but you know how well trying to protect myself went.”

“I do. It seems I might owe you an apology for not checking up on you after all that as well. Losing everything you thought you stood for is never an easy thing, and you… as untrusting as you were, you were never unkind,” Zevran acknowledged, taking a sip of his own mug and making a face.

“And even when you were following Aedan like a kicked spaniel, you didn’t treat me like the idiot the others did,” the blond Warden admitted, draining the last of his ale. “As nice as it is to see a friendly face, why are you here?”

“Do you remember my mentioning that the Crows would not take kindly to my failure?” Zevran asked, waving over the barmaid to refill the former Warden’s drink. The human nodded, taking the second ale gratefully. “They are still less than pleased with me, enough so I’ve been forced to find my own work. You were always competent with a sword, enough to keep yourself fed freelancing. Are you still the type to stay bought once I hire you on?”

“I should probably be insulted you even asked,” Alistair grumbled, staring into his drink. “But I could use the work, its been… What do you need and what’s the pay?”

“We’ve an assortment of potential jobs lined up, all far easier with someone of your skill and size. It’ll be a full third share of anything we get, when we start getting paid.” Alistair looked tempted, and Zev smiled, finishing his own drink. “We might have enough on hand to clear your tab here, let you leave on even terms. You once admitted you wanted to see the world.”

“You keep saying we,” Alistair asked, narrowing his eyes. “Who are we working with? Please tell me it isn’t Morrigan.”

“Maker forbid,” Zev snorted. “I suspect that witch returned to her swamp with a great sigh of relief after we were out of Ferelden. Our third is talking to Isabela over there, an old friend I managed to convince of my good intentions.” He gestured vaguely in the right direction, smirking when the former Warden looked and promptly choked on his ale. 

“Pretty redhead, low cut dress?” Alistair asked as mildly as he could, once he could breathe again. “Currently has a pirate’s tongue down her throat?”

“Probably, I did ask her to keep Isabela distracted while we had our conversation,” Zevran shrugged, following the human’s gaze. He had to admit, the way Isabela had Rinna pinned against the counter of the bar, thigh between her legs, was very… stirring. “She’s doing admirably, isn’t she?”

“Are… That can’t be, uh, allowed in public, is it?” Alistair wondered, not taking his eyes off the pair. Zev shrugged again, and Alistair pressed his mug to his burning cheeks. “Maker, I need air. And another drink.” He pushed himself away from the table, pacing near the door until Tethras collected Isabela, ushering her out of the tavern, grumbling loudly.

With her playmate required elsewhere, Rinna stretched, sauntering over to join the boys. Zev leaned back invitingly, and she arranged herself over his lap. The muddy blond grabbed another tray of drinks from the bar, and returned to the table, grateful for the thickness of his armor as the elven woman smiled warmly at him. 

“Alistair, this is Rinnala, one of my oldest friends. Rinna, amore, this is Alistair, one of the few other survivors from the blight. He’s agreed to joining our little pack, as you’ve called it,” Zev lazily remarked, curling an arm around her waist.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Alistair, and it will be have to be Rinna to you. Anyone who helped keep my Zevran alive against the darkspawn is enough of a friend for that,” she said sweetly, the rasp in her throat almost sounding like more of a purr. “Even more so when you’re agreeing to lend us your skills with a sword. He’s spoken well of your training,” she added, sliding off Zev’s lap to offer the human her hand. 

Alistair took the hand without thinking, a bemused, somewhat befuddled look on his face as he realized she was still at his eye level standing next to his chair. “I am, yes. Well trained. With a sword,” he stuttered, his hand still wrapped around her delicate fingers. “So you.. You’re an assassin too? I didn’t realize they..um…I’m going to go over there until I figure out how not to make a fool of myself.” She was laughing, but it wasn’t the same as Morrigan’s mockery, or the way Wynne and Leliana had giggled behind his back. It was musical, even with the odd edge to her voice, friendly, welcoming.

“Zev, how could you possibly keep such a precious puppy from me?” she scolded, and the still far too smug assassin shrugged. “Dear Alistair, I think we will greatly enjoy your addition to our company,” she soothed, patting the hand that hadn’t managed to let go of hers yet. 

He managed to find more of his tongue as the evening passed and the drinks emptied, although he suspected he still sounded like a bit of a fool. “I have to ask,” he blurted out when Zevran left the table for a moment. “Are you and he...? I saw you with what’s her name earlier, and…”

“I think everyone in the tavern saw me with Isabela earlier,” she laughed. “Zevran and I have been friends since we were children, and we’ve played at other things almost as long. So, yes, he and I are, but he and Isabela have their own game, one they invited me to cheerfully enough she and I play without him sometimes,” she explained lightly, gesturing idly with one hand as she nursed her wine.

“And you’re both okay with that? I mean, I see her in and out of here with more men that I could keep track of, but if you two are a thing… I was always told that… it was supposed to mean something,” Alistair traced the grain of the rough table, trying to control the flush of his ears. “That it was supposed to be something kept for someone special.”

“But everyone is special, Alistair,” she mused, those very deep eyes fixed on him as he tried to ignore exactly how much he enjoyed the way she said his name. “It’s the moments of connection between people that make us who we are. Sex is just one of a thousand forms of that connection, just a different moment of meaning.” He blushed at the word, and she smirked into her wine. “You are so precious. Back to the topic at hand, I can’t speak for Isabela’s standards, but I care enough about her to be happy she’s happy. As I care for Zev enough to take joy in his, even when I’m not involved.” She watched him puzzle his way through that statement, and her smirk softened. “You remind me of Amadeo,” she said gently, leaning back in her chair. “One of the youngest of my brothers, he was always… Even if he’d lived, he would never have been happy as a Crow.”

“Were you? You don’t… You don’t seem the cold blooded killer type,” Alistair asked, and she snorted softly, rubbing at the scars across her forearms. “To be honest, once I got to know him, neither did he.”

“We are what we had to be, perhaps,” Zev extemporized, setting the tray of food on the table. “We do appreciate the vote of confidence, however,” he added, reaching under the table to catch her hand, brush his thumb over her palm. “Does it mean you’re satisfied I’m not unleashing another Morrigan on you?” he asked the human, leaning back into his chair after an almost idle check of the area around them.

“Morrigan would be the swamp witch, correct?” Rinna asked, tugging at her sleeves before grabbing a buttered roll off the tray. “Pretty but unpleasant and abrasive, Zev told me. Which usually means she was the type to drown kittens and kick puppies.” Zevran and Alistair shared an eloquent look, and she sighed. “Hmm, I’m going with there had to be puppy kicking,” she noted.

“She was evil. And mean,” Alistair told her earnestly, managing to slosh half his current ale over himself. Somehow managing to read the look on Rinna’s face correctly, he waved his hand at her amiably. “Not like you, you’re nice, even if you apparently kill people. She wouldn’t have dared kick Dane, but I’m pretty sure if a baby puppy walked in front of her, pow, boot to the tail.” He continued gesticulating as he warmed to the subject, missing the way Zev tensed slightly at the mention of that Mabari. “She encouraged most of the shit Cousland pulled. He… Maker he was horrible, too. Neither of them cared about anyone but themselves, about getting what they wanted. She probably showed him how to do whatever he did to…” In another moment of clarity, he glanced over at Zevran, Rinna’s suddenly intent expression, and swallowed. “They’re mean, evil people, who manage to get away with everything.”

“One of whom has vanished, and the other is surrounded by an army of royal guards. They are both out of our reach, Alistair… for now,” the assassin told him, a dangerous sort of promise in his eyes. 


	3. It's only a problem if you make it one.

He woke as he usually did, under the table in the corner of the common room, splint mail and filthy gambeson balled into a pillow. It occurred to him, as it usually did in the mornings, when his head ached and his stomach twisted, that waking in a puddle of spilled, sour beer on a dirt floor was not one of his life goals. That Duncan would be rather ashamed of what he had turned into. On the other hand, Duncan had been the one to drag that asshole Cousland into the Wardens with him, send them to light the beacon that left them as the only Wardens to fight the Blight. 

He could smell fresh baked bread, along with something spicy and sharp, and he struggled to sit up, holding his head. There was a wiry redhead sitting on the table watching him, an odd look in her eyes. “We would have gotten you a room if you’d asked,” she noted in a low, resigned voice. He managed to crawl up into the chair next to her, and she handed him a tall mug of heated liquid, the source of the sharply spicy scent. “Back home, they refer to it as Barkeep’s Kindness. It should help. Tal… A friend of ours used to swear by it.” 

He took a sip, expecting something that would reach his roiling guts and return immediately. It tasted much like it smelled, warmly spiced and honey sweet, the faintest trace of something bitter underneath. His guts twisted as he gulped the rest down, but then settled completely, the pounding in his head easing. “It.. that worked. Thank you.”

“We’ve got a little something later today just out of the city. I’m not sure it really counts as a job, but it’ll let us get used to working together,” she told him, that odd look still in her eyes as she watched him. “Zev’s still asleep, but I realized we don’t know what you have for travel supplies, what you might need to pick up.” When his doe brown eyes focused on her, she smiled. “I’ll scrounge us up breakfast, and make sure all our tabs are paid off while you get bathed and ready for the day.” With that, she slid off the table, almost skipping off towards the kitchen.

He slunk out of the bath she’d nonchalantly left him tokens for almost an hour later, to find clean clothing and somewhat cleaner armor waiting for him. There was a mirror of dented, grimy metal at the end of the hall, and Alistair found himself staring. He’d almost forgotten what he looked like without the scraggly beard, without the layer of dirt. He practically looked like someone the Arl would recognize again. That Duncan would have recognized. 

His hands fisted without conscious thought at that. Deserter was an ugly word, but he hadn’t been given a choice. The careless sneer Cousland had turned on him after Anora had ordered his death, the thoughtful pause before he had suggested exiling him instead, still echoed sometimes. They had been the last of the Ferelden Wardens, they should have been like brothers, and Cousland had thrown him aside. Arl Eamon, the closest thing to family he had other than Goldanna, had thrown his lot in with the sudden alliance between Gwaren and Highever. Riordan, a senior Warden, the last ally he might have had, hadn’t said a word, letting him be replaced by someone who should have died a traitor’s death. 

He could have gone to one of the other Grey Warden enclaves, explained, but… He picked up the battered wooden shield, the old sword that took so long to keep an edge on. Cousland had even taken his father’s sword from him, Duncan’s silverite shield. He hadn’t felt like the Warden Duncan had made him into when he left Ferelden. He’d been the bastard who grew up in the Redcliffe kennels and barns, the miserable ten year old sent to the Templars against his will. 

“Well. you do clean up nicely,” Rinna purred at him, balancing a tray of food against her hip. She’d clearly taken the chance to clean up as well, that long red hair braided back behind her shoulders, something shiny and metallic worked into her plait. Her carefully fitted, tightlaced leather armor was dyed countless shades of green and grey and brown, patterned without rhyme or reason, but with something about it that suggested Dalish work.

He could see the edges of blades strapped to her calves and wrists, hints of more when she moved. Dangerous and graceful as a hunting cat, much like Zevran always had been. Like Zevran always had been when he was killing people, he reminded himself. She was very pretty, seemed sweet, but she was an Antivan Crow, a trained killer. She passed him a heavily laden plate of food, grinning at the voracious way he dug into it. “You eat like someone’s about to steal your plate!,” she laughed, piling tidbits from the platter onto her own. “I haven’t seen such lack of decorum since the last time my brothers visited at dinner.”

“I have sad news for you if your brothers eat like starving Wardens,” he retorted, snagging the butter off the tray for his roll. “At least I have the excuse of having actually been raised in a barn.”

“Bad habits for all of us, but we’ve actually had bowls stolen from us if we didn’t watch them. And most of my brothers were on their way to being your size and didn’t think they’d survive skipping a meal.” Rinna flicked a hand dismissively, nibbling on a bit of fruit. “The fact that for a while there at least six of us in training barracks at any given time complicated it. No one outside the family dared cross our ranks, but Matteo and Luca took whatever they wanted from the rest of us.” 

“With five brothers, I’m surprised anyone risked going near you at all, even Zevran,” Alistair laughed, and she snorted.

“Ten. I had ten brothers, back then,” she informed him, grinning at the expression on his face. “We were spread out a bit, but there were still at least six of us in training at any time. Sadly it’s just Rafael, Salvestro and I now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. What happened to the others?” he asked, not noticing the way her grin stiffened, the touch of ice crackling over the fruit she held.

“Ah, well, the life of an Antivan Crow,” she remarked lightly when she mastered herself. “There are high standards, hmm? In training, they line us up at least once a year, pick out the clumsiest or ugliest fledgling, and serve them to the rest of us as our Wintersend feast.”

Alistair did look up at that, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Might save on the feed bill, but if your brothers looked anything like you, I can’t imagine why they weren’t kept,” he offered. He looked back just in time to find himself rewarded with a far softer version of her earlier smile, before she caught herself.

“You are entirely too sweet a boy to be sleeping on a tavern floor,” she huffed at him, leaning back in her chair. “Much less running off with assassins. There is a part of me that wants to send you home to your mother.”

“I don’t have one. I was raised by giant talking dogs from the Anderfells,” he informed her, grabbing a few more rolls off the platter. “In that barn I mentioned earlier.”

“Ah. That explains why Zevran told me I was not to allow you to attempt cooking anything, ever,” she commented, stealing one of the rolls back off his plate. “He must be convinced you’d provide us raw meat on a pile of straw, my charmingly precious puppy.”

“My cooking isn’t that...Oh, Maker’s balls. You’re never going to let that drop now, are you?” he asked, resigned. 

“What, and deny those apparently remarkable hounds their place as your family? Never, puppy,” she assured him, eyes wide with assumed innocence. “Zev keeps coming up with excuses not to allow me a dog, but we’ve already agreed to bring you along.”

“It beats pike twirler or chantry brat, I suppose,” he muttered under his breath as he finished the last of the food.

Somehow that led to him telling her about Oghren, about the blight, as they navigated the market. About what had happened to Leliana and Wynne after Haven, about the way he had ended up exiled. Every now and then, it seemed she was humoring him as she steadily filled a new pack with travel supplies, just making thoughtful noises at the right points. Which was more consideration than he’d ever gotten from anyone but Duncan. And a fair amount of what he’d let happen during the blight was easier to get off his chest to someone who at least wasn’t looking at him. He had been the senior Warden, the one supposed to be in charge, and he’d let Aedan run everything. Let him unleash werewolves on a clan of Dalish elves, let him have the Tower annulled despite knowing the mages were fine, let him use the dragon’s blood to defile Andraste’s ashes. He’d protested all of it, but backed down every time the other Warden had reached for his blade. They’d had to stop the blight, and that had been the most important thing, right? Even when Aedan pushed Leliana off the side of the mountain for trying to stop him, carved the Sten into pieces for ‘questioning his authority’, casually ran his sword though Wynne when she tried to take him to task for all of it. 

Rinna was letting him talk, making sympathetic, non judgemental noises, and Alistair had to admit that was helping as much as that hangover cure had. Actually, she was listening to a great deal more of his ramble than he expected, going by the few questions inserted into the distracted noises. Largely about Aedan, and what he was capable of.

To be honest, the more he talked about it, the more he remembered, the nasty little things he’d put out of his mind. The way Aedan had watched elves that crossed his path even at Ostagar. That despite his words with a blade at his throat, Zevran had managed to stay out of the temperamental noble’s way for days… and then started tumbling over himself to please him the day after Honnleath, the day after Aedan let the demon stay with Wilhelm’s granddaughter. Eight years of Templar training, and Alistair had missed that entirely. 

The constant bruises and the occasional limp the assassin had on display after that he’d noticed, but had kept dismissing. His blatant offer to one of the Dalish elves having trouble with their boyfriend to take them aside and show them what a real man was like. In front of a mildly concerned Zevran, at that. The jokes he’d made with Oghren about a few of the elves being too pretty to leave to the werewolves, that if the werewolves were thinking at all they’d have slaked more than one hunger on some of those elves… Not even Morrigan had laughed at that one. That if he’d kept a few he could have seen what they were worth to the slavers. 

Really if the Maker were real, he had some serious questions about why this man survived the Joining. 

  
  


“Still enamored of our new warrior, amore?” Zev asked in a moment alone, as Alistair got his new gear packed.

“We’ve traded a sharp fanged sea wolf for a kicked puppy,” she quietly advised. “He’s precious, far cleverer than he pretends, and likely to return undying loyalty for the slightest scraps of kindness.” Zev spread his hands in a smugly unsurprised gesture, and Rinna gave him a resigned smile. “Yes, as you said when suggesting him. If he’s half as good with that sword as you think, we have a working team… as long as his drinking stays under control. As long as we keep an eye on what kind of jobs we take, because he is neither stupid nor used to… well.”

“If you remember, I had already broached the idea of screening the sort of work we accepted. We aren’t at the mercy of what the Master’s toss to us anymore, and we don’t need coin that badly, Rinna.” Zevran quietly remarked, and she swallowed, looking away. “None of us should have been forced to become used to any of that. We shouldn’t have…” He caught himself mid rant, tipping her face back up to his own, pressing his forehead against hers. “I knew, even then, amore. That you and Taliesen shielded me from the worst of our tasks as best you could. Arranged your plans to keep me out of what I couldn’t stomach, even when it meant you emptying your own when it was finished. I never thanked either of you for it.”

“You held my hair out of it and hauled him out of the gutter when he finished drinking, it… we loved you. You were our light, even in the worst of it, the one who still saw the targets as people,” she murmured, tangling her hands up into the gold of his hair. “Tally and I… we were raised to violence and orders, to keep walls between us and them. What was a little more blood on the black we carried, if it let you keep a touch more of the brightness?”

  
  
  
  


They moved like a dance while they fought the bandits, perfectly in tune without ever looking at each other, and it was all Alistair could do to keep up. He was winded by the end of the job, forced into more effort than the thug work he’d been surviving on. 

“You’ll do, puppy,” Rinna had laughed as he caught up to them, tossing him the small sack that held his share. And it got easier, the more jobs they ran together, to the point it felt like he actually was earning his share. Like he belonged. 

It was like his early days with the Wardens, and something better. That feeling of escaping looming despair and finding yourself among people who cared. Two towns after he had taken up with them, he’d woken to find his rusty splintmail replaced by chainmail and a thick breastplate, both fine steel, enameled or coated with something that didn’t reflect the light. When he picked it up, he found the runes worked into both, a tangle of what he seemed to remember as protective wardings and something that dampened the sound of the metal against itself. A town after that, his wooden shield developed yet another splintering crack, and he would have just wrapped it with another layer of leather. There was a shield that matched the breastplate in its place when he woke. And a sword of finer steel than his old one, one that would hold an edge without an hour of work each night.

He was equipped as a warrior again, instead of the roustabout thug he had been becoming, and his new team didn’t seem to even be taking it against his share. He tried offering the assassins his desperate thanks, enough coin to pay for some of the gear, and they just shrugged at him. “Puppy, you’re part of our pack now, hmm? Your wellbeing is ours,” Rinna had patiently pointed out, looking at the money he tried to hand her like it was covered in maggots. Zev had taken the money when offered it, but had still shrugged off the gratitude. “You clanked, you stank of rust, and you were liable to get yourself stabbed badly enough to need healing, Alistair. Cheaper to fix your armor and keep you along on the night stalks than rearrange the plans and hire a healer.”

And maybe that grand gesture of care for his life really was as empty as they dismissed it as, despite the fact he wasn’t stupid and knew how much decent armor cost. Zev still wore the dyed drakehide he’d gotten early during the blight, Rinna had the lighter kit she’d gotten from the local Dalish, both augmented with minor enchantments, and his new armor was easily in line with their own gear. The larger of their gestures might be passed off as more good business than personal concern. It was the little things that made him glad Zevran had found him. He still didn’t know what was in that hangover cure Rinna kept handing him, but Maker it worked. Worked more than well enough to counter the after effects of drinking enough to dull Warden nightmares.

It might be magic, but he had decided on a firm policy of ‘let’s not make an issue of the fact Rinna might technically an apostate.’ He’d yet to actually witness her using magic, but… he knew what spell healed wounds looked like, whether he was awake for the healing or not. The time his socks and boots went from sopping to steamed dry in the span of time it took to haul water barefoot from the stream. The times her arrows curved around him to hit a target. Until and unless she tried to set him on fire or turned into an abomination on them, it wasn’t a problem unless he tried to make it one.

And the constant supply of dry, mended socks was anything but a problem. His gambeson and tunics were also mysteriously becoming dry and unripped when he wasn’t looking. His waterskin seemed to stay filled and colder longer than expected. Wynne had done some of that when she had still been with them, but only if he asked, and asked pleadingly. Rinna just kept fixing the little things for both of them, without saying anything. About the same way Zevran always gave him an extra double helping of whatever he was cooking, always had a extra kettle of tea going for Rinna’s favorite tea. Always had an extra whetstone, an extra bottle of oil for his armor.

The way they both listened to whatever he was babbling about, laughed at his jokes, even if the ones too far at his own expense were also gently chided with “Oh, puppy. You can’t be that bad. Look at what we did yesterday.” Or “My dear Alistair, as much joy as Morrigan may have taken in your charade of obliviousness..”

What did it say about him that the two closest friends he’d ever had, the closest thing to family, were a pair of renegade assassins? Or worse, that he could watch the way they moved together, in battle and out, and… But they were… Rinna was... 

She wasn’t beautiful in the overpowering way that Morrigan had been, who had been striking despite her vicious nature, or in the softer, classic way Leliana and Anora had been, he decided, after a great deal of puzzled debate. Pretty and delicate featured, yes, but nothing like Isolde‘s careful fragility had been, capable of twisting men into protecting her with a single teary look. Rinna’s beauty was in the way she moved through the night, the way the daggers or bow fell into her hands, promising death to anyone on the other side. It was the way those deep grey eyes fixed on you as she listened, shifting tone so subtly with stormy emotion. It was the way she moved in Zevran’s arms, curled into his lap, pressed those lips to his.

He had friends now, purpose, he belonged. The assassins were far more circumspect around him than they had been before he’d agreed to join them, careful to make him feel as little like a third wheel on a two wheeled cart as possible. He was not going to do anything to jeapordize his place with them, not for the sake of something that stupid. The elves fit together with easy, perfect grace, and he would not ruin that just because what dreams he had that weren’t nightmares involved what Rinna looked like under her armor. Or her with that pirate, Maker, as little past those remembered kisses as he could imagine. Her leaning forward and talking about her and Zev and Isabela and really steamy things again, but they were in bed instead of at a table.

And he wasn’t even going to think about the dreams that didn’t involve her or darkspawn, the ones with sweat or rain dripping down tawny skin slashed with inky tattoos, Zev’s careless, cat like smile. He knew some men liked other men, some of the other Templar trainees had whispered about it… but he’d never... How in the Void would it work anyways? And after what Aedan had done… why would Zev want to do anything like that again, with him or anyone else?


	4. Ask us to stop, and we will.

Alistair vaguely remembered tossing far too much coin on the bar in the small marcher town they were in this week, getting stronger drink than he was expecting and not caring. He’d almost stopped drinking on the road, but he just… one night, without dreams or nightmares or thoughts about things he couldn’t have and shouldn’t want. Everything else from the night was a dark blur, but he was in a bed instead of on a floor or in a ditch. Under a blanket, even, without his armor or anything but pants. And with warmth pressed against his side, soft, soap scented warmth that… had a fair amount of red hair, and Maker’s breath his hand was holding her breast. 

Which felt really nice, and Rinna was snuggled into him so perfectly, but... “Zev is going to murder me,” Alistair whispered, the morning light like daggers in his eyes already. 

“Unlikely, dear Alistair,” Zevran retorted, a tray clattering against the table and a familiar spicy sweet scent rising before he dropped back into the still warm spot on the human’s other side. A careful squinted glance told Alistair he was in the same state of undress as himself and Rinna, with pants and nothing else. “How much do you remember from last night?”

“Uh… Drinking whiskey by myself?” the former Warden ventured, wincing. Rinna was waking next to him, stretching into him like a cat. “Did we… I didn’t...”

“We had a fascinating discussion after Zev took the bottle away from you.” She leaned into him further, making herself comfortable as Zevran snorted. “Beginning with your previously unvoiced, yet terribly deep seated interest in how far Crow tattoos go,” she elaborated as the human she was using as a cushion flushed and attempted to smother himself with a pillow. “And meandering along to other, more specific interests from there before being postponed for ethical reasons.”

“Meaning we went to bed on the promise to revisit the subject when you weren’t drunk beyond reason,” Zev translated, passing over the hangover cure as Alistair sat up. “Letting you look at more of our ink was harmless enough, taking you up on what else you offered last night…” He shook his head, handing Rinna the mug of tea from the tray. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make such a fool of myself last night…” Alistair muttered, groaning as he sipped at the spicy liquid. As his head settled, he took notice of the fact that neither of the elves had dressed any further since they woke. Zev had far bolder markings, and more of them,down his chest and his back, vanishing into those laced pants. Rinna’s were mainly to her shoulders and back, delicate, intricate, feathers over her shoulder blades and spine, with something slender curling down along the front of her ribs to the edge of her leather clad hip. “And again this morning.”

“That vine goes all the way to my knee,” she remarked, following his gaze. He flushed again, and she smiled softly. “I agreed to show off Zev’s work last night, even if you’re not going to pay the forfeit and kiss me after all.” Zevran flicked her ear chidingly, and she huffed. “He isn’t drunk now. We can at least discuss whether he wants to think about this.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to stop thinking about it,” Alistair grumbled, and the Antivans looked at each other again, something unreadable passing between them. “But I don’t want to mess this up. Not the team thing we already have, not the way you two are, you’re…” Zevran leaned forward, gently kissing the flustered human. Alistair pressed further into the kiss as the elf pulled back, hesitantly reaching up to trail the pads of his fingers over his cheek. “I’ve never really…I don’t know how this works, with both of us, with all of us…”

“Oh, puppy,” Rinna hummed, pressing her own kiss to Alistair’s jaw, letting him turn into her face to kiss her as he had Zevran. “We’ll just have to start at the beginning. We’ve time right now, time enough to figure some of this out. Just tell us what you like.”

“Ali, amore. If you want to stop, if anything is too much, tell us, and we will, without question,” Zev assured him, stealing another quick kiss. It had been enough weeks of watching the exiled Warden follow them with that wistful look in his doe brown eyes, enough for he and Rinna to chase the idea that he was nothing like Taliesen, but that such difference itself might be… interesting. “You said last night that you dream of us… What would you do, if you lived such a dream?” 

“Even in the best of dreams I didn’t have both of you,” Alistair mused, but reached out, running his fingers over the angles and edges of Zev’s tattoos, the wiry muscles under the sleek, tawny skin. “You offered me one of these once, but… did they hurt?”

“Some of them,” Zev admitted, meeting those deep brown eyes in a wordless request before licking his thumb and brushing it over one of the more noticeable scars across the human’s dusty skin. “Darkspawn or Aedan?” he asked lightly, managing to pull a chuckle out of the other man. 

“It would be one or the other, wouldn’t it?” Alistair’s fingers had found the broken ridges of old whip scars across the back of his shoulders, and he glanced up again,clearly debating his next words. 

Zev shook his head slightly, dismissing the unspoken question. “People such as us rarely come from happy childhoods, I’ve found,” he commented in as much of an answer as he could bear, as much to Rinna’s softly understanding look as the concerned human. In an attempt to shift the mood back, he quietly cupped the human’s chin to kiss him more insistently, tasting the lingering ginger from Rinna’s favorite cure on the inside of his cheeks. Alistair was breathing harder when the elf pulled back that time, trying to steady himself. He still wasn’t entirely sure how the steamy stuff he wanted could work between him and Zev, but he was really increasingly sure he wanted to find out. “Okay, that… I really liked that,” he whispered, suppressing a whine of protest when the blond elf pulled back again. 

But then Rinna was kissing him again, her lips softer but just as enthralling as she explored his mouth, encouraged him to explore hers. He started to reach out, to trace her skin as he had Zev’s, and found himself cupping breasts that fit easily in his hands. An endless parade of Chantry lectures screamed into his head, and he froze, trying to catch his breath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…” Rinna ran her hand over his, pressing it more firmly against her as she kissed him again, Zev’s lips trailing a line up her side before he stole Alistair’s lips back from her, and the lectures faded.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed there like that, letting him explore at his pace between heated kisses. Rinna snagged his tunic off the floor and went to bring back food at one point, but Alistair had been trying to decide if Zev’s tattoos really tasted ever so faintly different from the rest of his skin or if that was just his imagination. He was pretty sure they didn’t really, but it never hurt to be thorough.

“Ali, love,” she interrupted his steady progress across Zev’s torso. “As much as this sight gladdens my heart and warms my chest, I think we’ll need a moment to talk, hmm?” She set the tray down on the edge of the bed, smiling fondly and just a bit toothily at the boys. “We’re ahead enough we can take the day, but better we set limits before we get to them, alright, puppy?” Alistair looked puzzled at that, almost guiltily removing his mouth from the top edge of Zev’s hip. Rinna laughed at the look on his face, kissing him reassuringly, propping herself up to kiss the mildly aggrieved pout off Zev’s face. “How much further do you want to take this right now, Alistair? Its fine if this is all you want, or if you’re okay with less clothing but you don’t want sex,” she explained, handing him a piece of fruit. 

“I.. Uh… less clothing would be fine,” he mumbled, going red again, but he was softly grinning as she shimmied out of the light leggings, lifted his tunic slowly over her head. The thorny vine down her side really did run all the way to her knee, wrapping around the hollow of her hip and the inside of her thigh. “You’re beautiful,” he told her without thinking, eyes wide as he drank her in. “You both are, Maker’s breath…” He curled his fingers around her jaw, kissing her fiercely, pressing her down onto the bed to trace her ink as he had Zevran’s. 

Zev adroitly snagged the tray of food and Alistair’s forgotten fruit before it fell, setting it on the table. The former Warden was nibbling along the inked vine that ran under her breast, making the small elf arch up into him with a suppressed whine, and it was a sight to stir his already inflamed loins. He unlaced his currently far too tight pants,resisting the urge to take himself in hand. Ideally, they would have spent a little more time discussing exactly how far Alistair was willing to take this, but what was, was. He climbed back onto the bed behind the others, pressing a kiss between the human’s muscled shoulders, working his fingers down his spine before sliding them just under the waistband of his pants. “Oh, we are, yes,” he agreed, slowly tugging laces out of their grommets as he reached around. “But have you seen yourself, amore? So fierce in battle, so very skilled with a blade, with those calloused hands.” He licked along an old scar as Alistair’s pants came loose, fingers curling softly along the inside of his hip, just inside the fabric. 

The human shifted, catching Zev’s wrist, gently pulling it back. He sprawled to the side, between the elves, hauling himself up against the headboard. “I don’t know… Maker, I like this, I want… but in barracks, before the Wardens took me in, they said... I don’t want to hurt either of you, to ruin this.” Both elves were just looking at him, something between sympathy and skepticism in their eyes, and Alistair sighed, moving just enough to free himself from his pants. He closed his eyes, half expecting the familiar taunts and insults from his adolescence.

“Oh, puppy. Poor, very gifted puppy,” Rinna crooned, tucking herself back under his arm. “That is not something that will ruin things.”

“Whoever told you this is a bad thing was a jealous liar, my dear Alistair,” Zev laughed, loosely encircling as much of the large human cock as he could with one hand. “I’d wondered if you were to scale, but you’ve surpassed my expectations a bit.” Alistair flushed again, but grinned almost shyly at the assassin, trying not to thrust into the touch. 

“They said I’d hurt any woman I tried to… and Rinna is… not big,” he haltingly explained, a fair amount of worry still in his voice. “I still don’t know how it would work with you.”

“Hmmm. A number of ways only slightly complicated by your size, amore,” Zev almost purred, still slowly stroking the cock he held, a speculative look in his eyes. “And I’ve seen our pretty Rinna take larger… if not by much.”

“The time I ended up entertaining the Tal-vashoth mercenary captain the Masters were dealing with aside…” Rinna retorted with a sidelong look at an unapologetic Zev. “What you’ve been hiding in those pants is a challenge for someone my size, yes, but by no means a difficult one, puppy.” She leaned in, trailing her fingers over Zev’s before stroking the heated flesh with the same deliberate movement he was, smiling as Alistair whined and pressed up into their hands. “At least not if we teach you how to be considerate about it. Up for the lesson?” she asked, entirely too much mischief in her voice. 


End file.
